Plan Bee

by Hannah Reed

  “Not voluntarily,” I said.

  Then my cell phone rang. “I’m outside with Ben,” Hunter said. “Come out.”

  “You come in,” I said.

  “No way. The town’s biggest gossipers are in there. And why are the Petries holding a rummage sale outside your store?”

  “I’ll explain later. I’ve just been threatened.”

  “Fine, I’ll be right in.”

  That’s one of the things I like about Hunter. He’s flexible when he has to be. In more ways than one, but we won’t go there.

  Trent had been stocking fresh produce. He came up front at my request and took over the register. The rest of us, including Hunter and Ben, crowded into my office. Patti and I took turns, or rather, cut each other off randomly, so the story was a bit convoluted. “Then Patti found a hickory nut outside my ex-husband’s house,” I just had to add toward the end, forgetting that my boyfriend didn’t know that part. Hunter snorted. I hadn’t planned on telling him about the hickory nuts for exactly this reason. But I was in too deep to retreat, so I ignored Hunter’s amused expression. “And she found another one by her shot-out window. Then I decided to explore on the other side of the river, but I didn’t find anything unusual. When I got back, someone had left a smashed hickory nut by my door.”

  A moment of silence ensued.

  “Why hickory nuts?” Carrie Ann finally said. “That’s really stupid. I mean, if I was trying to scare somebody, I’d leave bullets or a knotted noose or a brownie with a note that said, Eat this and die.”

  Hunter looked momentarily startled, like he thought she really meant it in a literal way. Hunter wasn’t too sure about my family members and what they might attempt.

  “Carrie Ann’s just giving examples of more effective scare tactics,” Holly told him when he continued to stare at our cousin.

  “Hickory nuts are all over the place right now,” Milly piped up, using common sense, something a lot of people lacked. “You probably have a hickory nut–addicted squirrel on your street. You could be making a mountain out of a molehill.”

  “We don’t have any hickory trees on our block,” Patti pointed out.

  “Who knows how far a squirrel travels before it buries a nut,” came the reply. Milly wasn’t one to give up easily.

  “I wonder when the nut was left by my door,” I said. “I didn’t notice it before I went out in my kayak, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.”

  “It wasn’t,” Patti said matter-of-factly.

  “How would you know?” I asked.

  “I just do.” Patti looked away.

  Then Hunter spoke up and let me down by saying, “Everybody’s on edge right now and maybe slightly overreacting. I suggest relaxing, going about your business, and”—he glanced at me—“cooperating with the police chief. Johnny Jay might not be everybody’s favorite, but he’s thorough and dedicated. He’ll wrap up the case with the right suspect behind bars.”

  I looked around the room. Neither Milly nor Hunter believed that Patti and I were in any harm. Holly would support me regardless, even if I said little green men were on my roof. But that’s just because she’s my sister and has to. Even Ben avoided my eyes. Or so it seemed.

  After everyone else cleared out, Hunter gave me a hug and a top-of-the-head kiss and left me to reflect on the past few days. Maybe Milly was right. And Hunter probably knew best. After all, he was a cop. By the time I finished thinking things through, I had almost convinced myself that the hickory nut threat theory was pretty ridiculous.

  Except if I wanted to psychologically mess with someone, I wouldn’t make it obvious with bullets or brownies like Carrie Ann had suggested. I’d go the more subtle route. Leave my victim with enough doubt to make her uncomfortable and nervous. And best of all, who would believe her when she ran around telling everybody she’d been threatened with hickory nuts?

  Nobody, that’s who.

  Holly knocked on my office door and came in before I could invite her, which defeated the whole purpose of having closed doors and the courtesy of knocking. “We’re getting complaints about Aggie. She’s accosting customers.”

  A lightbulb went on in my head. I remembered what Hunter had said when he first saw her tables outside. Something about a rummage sale. Yes, that was it. “Can they hold a rummage sale on Main Street without a permit?”

  “Got me.”

  I called the town hall to check, and my cheesy grin gave Holly the answer without her even having to ask. “You can’t turn around in this town,” she said, “without paying to do it.”

  “I’ll have Trent call the police station and report them. They’ll respond if he’s the one who asks them to. We can’t let Aggie Petrie ruin business.”

  A little later I heard commotion outside. I tried not to gloat, I really did, but I wanted a ringside seat to see the coming attraction. We all headed for the sidewalk, employees and customers, all of us.

  Johnny Jay and Officer Sally Maylor, who is a decent cop and loyal customer, were trying to explain the rules about having a permit to Aggie and Eugene. Their son Bob was there, too. He had a box open and was transferring more handmade scarves to a table. Aggie was swinging her show cane. “I have permission from the store owner and that’s all I need.”

  “No,” Sally said, “you still need a permit.”

  Eugene turned to me. “Can you write us up one?”

  Johnny Jay rolled his eyes. “Fischer can’t help you. You have to apply at town hall. Come on, pack up and get out of here.”

  “Over my dead body,” Aggie said to him.

  Johnny told her he could accommodate that request.

  Something must’ve snapped in Eugene, because he jumped between his wife and the chief and shoved Johnny Jay.

  Sally smacked Eugene with her nightstick. Not hard, but with enough force to get his attention.

  Aggie whacked Sally in the back of the legs with her cane, causing Sally’s knees to buckle. She went down, but came up swinging.

  Then it got really rowdy.

  I could tell Bob was torn between his loyalty to his parents and the possibility of doing jail time. Since he had a record (or that was the rumor anyway), I’m sure the last thing he wanted was cop trouble. He backed away.

  By the time the dust settled, Aggie and Eugene were handcuffed and locked in the backseat of Sally’s squad car.

  I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen. Amazing really, if you think about it. Most of us are relatively afraid of Johnny Jay, but those two Petries waded right in without even once considering the consequences. Johnny Jay was going to roast them alive over a slow fire.

  Better it was somebody other than me for a change.

  Bob started putting the scarves back into the box.

  “I want all those tables taken down. You have ten minutes,” the police chief said to Bob, who nodded and picked up speed, jamming things into boxes haphazardly.

  “Where are you going, Fischer?” Johnny said to me when I turned to re-enter my store.

  “Johnny Jay, last I looked this was a free country. I can go wherever I want. And I don’t even have to ask your permission.”

  “Look what I have for you, that little present I mentioned earlier. Since you didn’t bother showing up down at the station, I’m here to present it in public.”

  I really didn’t want to turn around. I whispered to Holly, who was ahead of me, “What does he have?”

  “Handcuffs,” she said.

  And that’s how I got locked up in an interrogation room with Aggie and Eugene Petrie.

  Nineteen

  “A whole street full of people heard the police chief threaten my wife,” Eugene said from his shackled position at one end of the table.

  “I think he meant it figuratively,” I said from the other.

  I really hadn’t believed Johnny Jay when he’d threatened me with handcuffs for not showing up at the station to answer more of his dumb questions. But here I was! And putting me in the same room with
these two was just plain mean.

  “We’re countersuing,” said Aggie, who was in the middle. “He can’t just chain us up like dogs.”

  “You shouldn’t have hit him with your cane.” That was me.

  “Why don’t you shut up,” Aggie said.

  We sat in silence for a while. The only good thing about this unpleasant situation was that the Petries couldn’t attack me even if they decided to get physical. I swear I saw rabidlike froth on Aggie’s lips. But they weren’t nearly as intimidating in handcuffs and leg irons, although in my opinion Johnny Jay went way overboard with restraints this time.

  At least he’d left my legs free. That was a plus.

  “If you get out before we do,” Eugene said next, directing his gaze my way, “bail us out.”

  I wanted to say, “Over my dead body,” but I had a pretty good idea what his response would be. Instead I said, “Bob and Alicia will get you out.”

  “You owe us,” Eugene said.

  I made a mental note: In the future, no more nasty characters in my life. I would surround myself with people who made me feel good. Only happy ones, nobody else. People like:

  • Grams (always sweet and kind)

  • Holly (usually a great friend)

  • Carrie Ann (upbeat most of the time)

  • Hunter (makes me feel good all the time)

  • Stanley (to talk bees and honey)

  • Patti (wait, scratch that)

  • And even Mom (if she kept up the good vibrations)

  Aggie grinned slyly. “I bet you wouldn’t be in here in the first place,” she said to me, “if you hadn’t had sex with the dead guy.”

  “What?”

  “Sure, pretend you didn’t.”

  “Where did you hear a ridiculous thing like that?” Just imagining myself with Ford made me sick to my stomach.

  “I heard your sister tell that real estate agent all about it.”

  Then I remembered. “Oh, that.” I tried to laugh it off, but the sound coming out of my mouth was more like a weak whimper. Aggie had overheard Holly messing with Lori’s head. My sister’s trick to get Lori chasing after Ford had worked in a sort of twisted, bizarre way we couldn’t have anticipated. “She was only kidding.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Really.”

  “The police chief should hear about your sleazy little tryst, if he hasn’t already. Maybe Eugene and I can make a trade, negotiate with him—information on you and the dead guy for our freedom and all charges dismissed.”

  “Don’t forget I caught you digging in our garden,” Eugene pointed out.

  “I wasn’t digging in your garden.”

  Just then, I heard keys jingling in the lock and Johnny Jay walked in. “Fischer,” he said. “You’re up first.”

  “I should go before her,” Aggie said. “When you hear what I have to say, you’ll lock her up for good.”

  Johnny Jay ignored her. Thank God for small miracles, as Mom would say.

  A few minutes later, he and I were in a different room, smaller and much quieter without big-mouth Aggie making all that threatening noise.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you that I haven’t already told you,” I said. “It’s all in the written report and we’ve been over this before.”

  “New facts came to light and I’d like to shine a bigger beam on them. And on you.” He chuckled like he’d made a funny joke. Now, he kicked back and swung his feet up on the table, which I thought was rude. The bottoms of his shoes were facing me. He had a wad of something disgusting squashed on the right one. After staring at me for a few minutes, he said, “What was your relationship to the deceased?”

  “Ford? Nothing at all,” I said. “We didn’t have any kind of relationship. I only met the guy once for a few minutes. I went over to the house thinking Clay was back in town and he answered the door.” Since Johnny Jay would try extra hard to trip me up, I thought I better revise my statement. “I take that back, I saw him twice after that. Both of those times he was dead.”

  “You didn’t happen to see him go from alive to dead, did you?”

  “Very funny.”

  “I have a witness who says you had sexual relations with him.”

  “You were listening in when horrible Aggie came up with that outrageous lie?” I couldn’t believe we were wired for sound in the interrogation room, but it stood to reason, knowing Johnny.

  The chief shot me a look. “I’ll follow up with her when I’m through with you. But I have another reliable witness who made that exact same claim.”

  I knew exactly who that was.

  “Lori Spandle isn’t a reliable witness,” I said. “She’s been out to get me since high school.” I could have mentioned that Johnny Jay has been out to get me since then, too, but I didn’t want it to sound like sour grapes. “Where is Lori anyway? I really need to talk to her.”

  “I never mentioned my witness’s name, so back off. I should get your sister in here. She’s the one who spilled the beans about you and the victim,” he said.

  “Yes, bring her in right now so we can clear this up.”

  “She’d stick up for you, wouldn’t she? She’d lie right to my face.” He sneered. “Here’s one possibility: You and the deceased start getting all hot and heavy and he does something you don’t like, maybe something especially kinky and he won’t stop, so you end up killing him. Or maybe you like what he’s doing, but get carried away, if you follow my drift. Pretty soon, you realize he’s dead. The whole thing could have been an accident. Either way, he’s not around anymore and you don’t know what to do with the body. So you stuff it into the fireplace.”

  I had to interrupt at this point because the whole thing was so unbelievable. “That is the stupidest…”

  “Pipe down. Killers do strange things in a panic. Anyway, once he’s dead, you calm down and come up with a better plan. Send Lori Spandle over there, let her discover him. You know her pretty well, know how she reacts to a crisis; not too good with them, is she? She does exactly what you think she’ll do. She runs away. But what you didn’t plan on was that she decided to keep her mouth shut. Partly to save the last few hours of her husband’s festival. Partly because she feels responsible because she rented to the deceased, and she doesn’t know how to handle it.”

  Talk about a twisted story. Lori Spandle hasn’t taken responsibility for a single thing her entire life. What a crock.

  “I need my cell phone back,” I said. “I get to make a phone call.” If the chief and the town chairman, and his loosey-goosey wife were all working together to put me behind bars, I was in really big trouble.

  “What do you think of my theory?”

  “I’m not saying one more word to you, Johnny Jay.” Then I thought of something. “Actually, I do have one question: Exactly how did Ford Stocke die?”

  “You don’t get to ask questions.” He swung his feet down to the floor and stood up. “Now, I’m going to let you loose for now, but don’t leave town. I’ll be watching you.”

  And with that, he let me go. Officer Sally Maylor drove me back to The Wild Clover. After a few minutes of silence in the squad car I asked, “How did Ford Stocke die?”

  Sally pantomimed turning an imaginary key on the side of her lips and tossing it away.

  I sighed. Johnny had an iron grip on his officers.

  When I reentered The Wild Clover, the store was full of customers. They collectively turned to me with questioning expressions on their faces.

  “Everything’s cool,” I said to them. “Aggie and Eugene are still in jail. But me? No big deal. A misunderstanding between the chief and me. But what else is new on that front, right?”

  Holly came forward and gave me a big sisterly hug.

  Since I had an attentive audience, and the rumor about me and Ford was bound to get out, if it wasn’t already, I decided to head it off by announcing it right up front. Total transparency was my new motto, one I’d been thinking about since accusations started fl
ying at the police station.

  “There’s a nasty rumor going around—” I began, only to have my cousin cut me off.

  “We haven’t heard any new rumors yet,” Carrie Ann said. “And I’d know because I’ve been checking customers out, managing things.” I didn’t miss my cousin’s extra emphasis on managing. I ignored her, however, and continued “—that claims I was romantically involved… er… um… more like sexually involved with the dead man,” I said. “Please, please don’t believe a word of it, because none of it is true.”

  Holly glanced up sharply and asked me, “Who started that vicious rumor?”

  I narrowed my eyes and did a short stare-down into my sister’s eyes, sending a message as privately as possible. “Oh,” she said, catching on that it had all started with her. “Uh… oh no.”

  And just when I thought my whole life sucked, that it was heading for the storm sewer to mix with who knows what kind of disgusting sludge and waste, my friends and loyal customers came to my rescue.

  “What a lie!” Carrie Ann shouted with passion.

  “Whoever is spreading that one around is going to regret it,” someone else said. “Just let them open their mouth to me just one time! I’ll set them straight.”

  Heads nodded in unison.

  “We’re behind you, Story,” Milly said. “All the way. Aren’t we, gang?”

  Murmurs of agreement swept through the store, from front to back and even sideways in one giant wave.

  To my battered and abused ears and downtrodden soul, their voices were like one big, beautiful, mountainous roar of confidence.

  It was all I could do not to break down and start sobbing with joy.

  But a few renegade tears slid down my cheek and I lost my voice for a little while.

  Twenty

  Soon after, my cell phone rang and Grams’s sweet voice said, “I love this little dog.”

  “She’s looking for a home. You know Norm isn’t coming back.”

  “I would take her in a heartbeat,” my sweet grandmother said, “but…”